A view looking east from the Esplanade at the end of lower Hove Street c.1900. The coastguards lived in a row of cottages on the opposite side of Kingsway. The station was also used by the RNVR for training purposes. The single-storey timber-clad building on the corner later housed a battery of 4 twelve-pounder guns which permanently protruded from the front of the building. It is not clear if any guns were installed at the time of this picture. The two storey building further on was known as the Battery House. The RNVR left the site in 1968 which was bought by the Council and cleared. The Battery House was demolished in 1969.
Today everything has changed except for the seafront railings and the distant roofline of the houses on the opposite side of Kingsway.
The Hove Battery (or at least the parade ground behind it) was the last known home of one of the guns of the SMS Koenigsberg, a German WW1 cruiser that took refuge and was eventually scuttled in the Rufiji delta in what is now Tanzania. All 10 guns were removed put on frames and used with the German forces in East Africa, being captured/destroyed at various points. Post WW1, one of these guns found its way to London; it was given to RNVR Hove some time in the 1920s due lack of storage space in London: there is a photo of it in situ in the early 30s, but nothing thereafter. Not the sort of thing you could hide easily: does anyone know what happened to it?
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